Congo’s Cholera Outbreak Tough to Control

In the mineral rich province of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cholera has claimed 100 lives. The health workers and affected residents feel that it is hard to put an end to this.

"This disease is satanic!" Annie Masengo, a mother who has just lost one of her six children to cholera in the poor Kenya district of Katanga's capital Lubumbashi, told AFP, saying she could "only pray all the time."

"There's no tap water here. We drink rain water. The government distributed chlorine on February 7, but it has already run out and I have no money to buy any" to purify infected water, Masengo said.

Her son of three died because he arrived too late to be saved in one of the treatment centres set up in Lubumbashi by the international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors without Borders).

"On average, we're taking in about 60 new cases each day in Lubumbashi and in Likasi," the second most badly affected town, MSF emergency team coordinator Bertrand Perrochet said.

"We can cope with the patients arriving when it comes to medical treatment," Perrochet explained. "But the problem is to bring the disease under control by dealing with its root causes."

In Lubumbashi and Likasi, the foyers of the highly contagious intestinal disease are in the working-class neighbourhoods, where most people have to put up with the appalling hygienic conditions that promote cholera, which kills without treatment.